This review was made possible due to attending a Press and Industry Screening of The Eternal Daughter.
The Eternal Daughter centres on a middle-aged filmmaker (Tilda Swinton) and her mother who spend a few nights in an old country hotel, a location that holds meaning for them both. It’s an intricately layered piece about motherhood, memory and loss, dressed up as a gothic chiller. Swirling mist, looming shadows, a ghostly presence half-glanced in a window…
The Eternal Daughter is a complex story for sure, what first starts as a vacation film between a mother and daughter soon becomes a traumatic ghost story… It’s fair to say I definitely stumbled when watching this, due to mixed signals given by director, Joanna Hogg.
The following review does contain spoilers.
Seeing Double
If it wasn’t already clear from the brief synopsis provided, Tilda Swinton plays both a middle-aged filmmaker and her mother in The Eternal Daughter. I think Swinton does a brilliant job portraying both, and her masterclass in acting is by far the best part about the film.
The catch? The mother appears to be a ghost and not really there, and this fact isn’t revealed until about 10 minutes before the credits roll. Was it obvious? No, but it should have been to be honest, especially after I watched Goodnight, Mommy the other week… Another awful film, lol.
Whilst watching the film, my biggest criticism of the film was the choice to not actually feature both of Tilda Swinton’s characters within the same frame – showing the two connecting in anyway. It felt cheap, and quite aggravating at times. Almost as if Hogg didn’t know how to frame the two together, or had any clue how to stitch two separate pieces of film featuring the pair of characters together.
Double Trouble.
However, the mirage was soon up when I finally got what I wanted. A shot of the pair, sat at the dining table for a birthday celebration – that is until the ball drops, the real fact that Julie’s mother isn’t even there and she is grieving by imagining her passed mother… Small gasps filled the cinema screen, myself included – I won’t lie. I genuinely didn’t see the reveal coming.
Now, you can look at it two ways. The choice not to frame the pair together is terrific, and is a truly stylistic choice and Hogg should be praised forever because of it. However, the other way (my opinion) is incredibly frustrating because the end result looks like a sloppily-edited home made movie at times, especially scenes when the two are conversing with one another. But that’s just my opinion!
Horror?
I liked the few horror elements which The Eternal Daughter had. Ghostly faces that appear in windows at night is always a welcomed convention, and definitely unsettling in this film. There is a clear setup for the first time that Julie sees the face in the window, and I appreciated that. You’ve also got a dog whining at complete nothingness, creaking floorboards and who could forget… wind that sounds like people screaming!
Whilst it was unsettling at more, I do wish more of that Gothic Horror was leaned into, making the film feel a little bit more worth it. Especially given how much this film does drag, and from what I’ve heard, Joanna Hogg loves a good slow-paced film – which The Eternal Daughter certainly is. The 96 minute runtime soon felt like 126 minutes by the end of it.
Final Thoughts
Despite Tilda Swinton killing it (twice), The Eternal Daughter wasn’t for me unfortunately. I liked the horror for the most part, just couldn’t get my head around the attempts to display trauma and loss. Maybe in a few years I can revisit this and watch with a different perspective, but for now it’s definitely an easy pass. Not my favourite film of the year, for sure.
Check out a clip from The Eternal Daughter below:
